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As might be expected since the departure of Ernie Baker and the installment of Tom Kirby as head of GW US, more changes are in the works besides those announced already like the HQ move. Supposedly some positive and fun things are on the horizon, though details have not been revealed as yet. However, more cost cuts are being made too. As of one week from now many GW US stores will have their operating hours cut to 35 hours per week. Other dramatic cuts are rumored, though without confirmation I would hesitate to list them here. If anyone out there has confirmation of further changes, please list them below.

I'd be a lot sadder if there were any GWs left in Massachusetts anyway. Good thing I have a good LGS to play at; I feel bad for those who don't.

You mean they are cutting GW stores hehe. What you see is micromanaging at its best.

Boss "We can save bla bla bla amount of money by making all our stores open only 35 hours!"

Logical Employee"But sire nobody comes into the store durring those hours so we need to stay open later"

Boss "I am off to the Board members to show them how valuable I am for saving them 5 hours per each store"

Logical Employee "But Sire...we only have 5 stores left" Door closes....

Monday mornings at my local GW in Oz, they are lucky to get 5 people through the door and it is in the biggest shopping centre in the state and right next to the food court.

Except school holidays, then the place is packed every minute it is open.

That is unless the store is in a mall. If its in a mall, they have to maintain the mall's hours of operations. Thats the way it works in the US. If not, they pay fines.

boyd wrote:That is unless the store is in a mall. If its in a mall, they have to maintain the mall's hours of operations. Thats the way it works in the US. If not, they pay fines.

Maybe in your area, but some stores are allowed to ignore it(Chik-fil-a, for instance, is still allowed to observed their closed on Sunday rule).

Ostrakon wrote:I'd be a lot sadder if there were any GWs left in Massachusetts anyway. Good thing I have a good LGS to play at; I feel bad for those who don't.

Agreed!

And, as a resident of Massachusetts, I'm interested to know where your good LGS is!

Canada's getting hit too. At first it seems like this belongs in its own thread, but GW Canada is done now. They shut down Canadian HQ and distribution centre, even took away our Games Day with the rest of the American ones other than Baltimore.
Word is they're pulling out of malls every chance they get to avoid having to open Mondays because that's their slowest day. I thought this seemed ridiculous, but after visiting the next closest store to me (since my mall store is getting shut down in two weeks), turns out it's true.
I'd say Fishboy nailed it on the head. I just hope this isn't the beginning of the end. If GW goes the way of WotC, WH is dead to me.

Thanks to BrassScorpion for bringing the changes to attention, but I'm in the same boat as Ostrakon. GW doesn't like Georgia, changes will go unnoticed in the South.

Teek wrote:Thanks to BrassScorpion for bringing the changes to attention, but I'm in the same boat as Ostrakon. GW doesn't like Georgia, changes will go unnoticed in the South.

Or the Midwest, unless you live in the Chicagoland area. Closest store to me is about 7 hours away.

And only 35 hours a week? I guess they only need 1 employee to work the store.

I guess they only need 1 employee to work the store.

That may be sadly prophetic.

Not in Cali. Unless they give them permission to leave for 30 minutes for lunch and close the store for 2 10 minute breaks a day they are going to need to have 2 employees. Dang state labor laws anyway

GW in Aus has most of those hours anyway - 9am - 5pm weekdays. So useless for people like me, who work longer hours than that.

And mine, at Miranda, does have a few people in on a Thursday, mostly uni students. Then again, most people have jobs or lives otherwise, right?

In Houston they are cutting the stores down to only being open 5 days a week and only being staffed by one person. Everyone who works here has to reapply for their job and they will choose their store staff from that pool. That really sucks in some ways because they have some relly good staff floating around. One guy I know in perticular does not even have an assigned store, they just send him to one of the different ones that needs him everyday.

To add onto this... My FLGS that I go to has been getting screwed over on getting orders in. They no longer recieve the black box, and getting in new releases is very problematic. My girlfriend had to wait 2 weeks while they tried to get the new nids book in. I went in there yesterday to get battle missions and they didnt have it. They say they MIGHT have it tomorrow but it is loking more like this weekend.

Hulksmash wrote:Not in Cali. Unless they give them permission to leave for 30 minutes for lunch and close the store for 2 10 minute breaks a day they are going to need to have 2 employees. Dang state labor laws anyway

Back in 99/2000 when I lived in London the small UK stores with 1 staffer during the day did exacly that.


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I'm really suprised at how far they are going to close down the infrastructure in the US. Sure they overexpanded but the entirity of South East US losing its stores seems pretty stupid....

Maybe if they didn't alienate their audience, they'd have more business.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

I heard that if you like your store you'll have to give them a pint of your blood.

And that instead of turning the lights on we have to play by the light of our cell phones.

And that if you lose the manager gets to sell your army on ebay.

Also half the store will be given over to buying gold jewelry.

And half the boxes will be stuff with rocks instead of miniatures.

Supposedly some positive and fun things are on the horizon, though details have not been revealed as yet.

Since GWs corporate maneuvering and workings don't really interest me, the GW gamer and hobbyist in me is curious what the positive and fun things are. Any inkling of what that may entail?

Alpharius wrote:

Ostrakon wrote:I'd be a lot sadder if there were any GWs left in Massachusetts anyway. Good thing I have a good LGS to play at; I feel bad for those who don't.

Agreed!

And, as a resident of Massachusetts, I'm interested to know where your good LGS is!

I play at Battlegrounds in Abington. Saturday is 40k day, it's usually easy to pick up games then. They're prepping for their annual megabattle so a lot of the tables are in "do not touch" mode as the terrain is being redone at the moment. But usually they have 6 good tables specifically for tabletop, but in a pinch there are other tables you can just throw terrain on to play.

I'm usually there on Sundays getting my ass handed to me by my fiancee's Space Wolves though I try to show up on Saturdays for variety.

They are cutting over here in Washington to. 1 per store.

Economical optimization. GW being smart for once? ha

I could go up the road to my GW on a Thursday night... but then I'd be going into a GW, and I don't really see the point in that.

Wow. I'm picturing a store only open 5 days a week, 9-5, with one staff member. There are no demo games, display cases full of grey models, an empty 2'x2' "gaming table, no discussion of the game whatsoever. There is only "thanks for your money, now take your and get the out of here."

lords2001 wrote:GW in Aus has most of those hours anyway - 9am - 5pm weekdays. So useless for people like me, who work longer hours than that.

And mine, at Miranda, does have a few people in on a Thursday, mostly uni students. Then again, most people have jobs or lives otherwise, right?

H.B.M.C. wrote:I could go up the road to my GW on a Thursday night... but then I'd be going into a GW, and I don't really see the point in that.

I thought you guys all played at H.B.M.C.'s house and bought from maelstrom.

I'm hearing all the regional/area managers are being laid off (maybe that's old news).

1 per store? That's pretty ridiculous (but I'm sure it's true).

I'm genuinely starting to worry about the future of this hobby - I really think the people at the top of the company are making the wrong moves for longevity.

Orangecoke wrote:I'm hearing all the regional/area managers are being laid off (maybe that's old news).

1 per store? That's pretty ridiculous (but I'm sure it's true).

I'm genuinely starting to worry about the future of this hobby - I really think the people at the top of the company are making the wrong moves for immediate monetary gain.

fixed.

sonofruss wrote:I thought you guys all played at H.B.M.C.'s house and bought from maelstrom.

We do - we did on Saturday in fact - and we reached a new level of Geekdom on Saturday as well. How? We played Texas Hold 'Em for 6 hours.

How is that geeky you ask?

Well it wasn't us playing Texas Hold 'Em, it was our characters from our Dark Heresy campaign playing a card-game, to earn more Thrones in game to buy more weapons.

You certainly can't do that up at my local GW.

The Japanese model is one guy per store, closed on 2 weekdays (in the Chiba case Wed Thurs). The major store in Jimbo cho has a lot more staff hanging around. The hobby here is still trying to get a foothold, but most people here are interested in domestic Sci-Fi manga/anime/model and tentacle porn. Plus there is no space to play at your home as most people live in tiny flats.

...

My mind is boggled.

Did any of your PCs win the Millenium Falcon?

You could disguise it and call it the thousand year old bird or something...

Orangecoke wrote:I'm hearing all the regional/area managers are being laid off (maybe that's old news).

1 per store? That's pretty ridiculous (but I'm sure it's true).

I'm genuinely starting to worry about the future of this hobby - I really think the people at the top of the company are making the wrong moves for longevity.

And then the GW stocks will plummet due to gakky sales, but that's not going to straight out put them out of business. They'll have to consider making some different moves. Right now pushing SM is working for them, but when that market dries up - and it will - they'll be forced to switch strategies.

The game isn't going anywhere. They want to maximize profit, but they're making the same dumbass short-term decisions that cripple businesses, and when they realize how stupid it is, they'll try to fix it and have a point in the past that says "See, it didn't work the last time we tried it."

To be fair, GW's marketing team deserves to be fired. They do need to advertise in some way beyond having 40k video games to introduce people to the game. It relies way too much on word of mouth and only having shelf space in specialist games stores means close to zero exposure.